Film Producer Robert Lantos: Justice Vs. Propaganda…….

Ahh, just where I knew it would be!For starters, Naomi Klein is a lying scumbag who purposely misquotes the late great, Milton Friedman, while lying just about everything in between, in order to pimp her stupid socialist hand book, The Shock Doctrine.She is also a lying scumbag where Israel is concerned as well, which brings the Tundra Tabloids to the next story. Naomi Klein gets a royal slap down by film producer, Robert Lantos, who has had more than enough of the stupid, verbal masturbation that parades itself as serious discourse from likes of people like Naomi Klein. She personifies the anti-intellectual jet-set who think they know how to solve all the problems of the world, which usually start with Israel as being their jump off point in their quest in righting all of the wrongs of the evil West. What a maroon. KGSH/T Barry Rubin

There’s justice, and then there’s propaganda

The TIFF protest is at odds with our society’s fundamental values: freedom of expression and freedom of individual choice

I am not a professional agitator and I don’t write political missives for a living. I am a filmmaker, however, and I have a very long history with the Toronto International Film Festival, which I have had the honour of opening 10 times. I write this from the set of Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s Version, whose hero, Barney Panofsky, would undoubtedly share my view: Enough is enough!

There is a difference between most people and professional propagandists. The latter serve their cause by repeating a false statement of “fact” so often and with such emphasis that decent people think there must at least be a modicum of truth to it.

This age-old but effective propaganda technique has, as of late, given rise to such blatant falsehoods as “Israeli apartheid,” or, to quote Naomi Klein’s open letter to TIFF last week, “The city of Jaffa [was] Palestine ‘s main cultural hub until 1948.” This seemingly factual statement fails to mention the detail that there was no such thing as Palestine prior to 1948. The city of Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 in what was then a Turkish colony, later a British colony and once upon a time a Roman colony, consisting of lands from which the indigenous Jewish population had been forcefully – though never fully – evicted.

The headline of last week’s open letter, protesting the focus on films by Tel Aviv filmmakers, was “No celebration of occupation,” which incorrectly implies that Tel Aviv is occupied territory. We are not talking about the West Bank or the Golan Heights here, but the biggest population centre in the heart of Israel , where the first neighbourhood was built in 1887. If that is disputed territory, then Ms. Klein and her armchair storm troopers are clamouring for nothing short of the annihilation of the Jewish state. They are effectively Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s local fifth column.

The Toronto festival is showcasing movies made by filmmakers from Tel Aviv. This foul and coercive attempt to disrupt the display of their talent simply because they are citizens of the Jewish state is not just an Israeli issue. It is a Canadian issue. It is an assault on our most cherished values, on the very reason why my family chose to immigrate to this country. In Canada , we hold our freedom of expression sacred. Filmmaking is free of political censorship and festivals are free to program whatever they wish.

TIFF’s independence was hard won. In 1978, when my first movie, In Praise of Older Women, was shown at the opening-night gala, the Ontario Censor Board attempted to prevent it from being shown, demanding cuts. The fundamental logic of censorship is premised on the principle of in loco parentis: that the censor knows better what’s good for people than they know themselves. We defied the censors and my film was shown uncut. In the 30 years since, the festival has operated without interference or sanctions. Until now.

I don’t hold with the lashing of women for the “crime” of wearing trousers, but I don’t believe the festival should boycott films from Malaysia . I’m not a fan of Iran ‘s dictatorship, but that doesn’t give me the right to demand the festival cancel Iranian film screenings.

Ironically, the boycott Tel Aviv affair began over filmmaker John Greyson’s decision to withdraw his short documentary Covered to protest the presence of Israeli films. His film documents the disruption, by local homophobes, of the Sarajevo Queer Film Festival.

As Mr. Greyson, Ms. Klein and their mob know perfectly well, Israel is the only country in its region where a film like his could be made and shown without government interference, and where no one is persecuted or discriminated against because of his or her sexual persuasion. The protesters obediently kowtow to the party line of autocratic regimes and terrorist organizations who would not hesitate, given the opportunity, to dispatch Mr. Greyson and his film to a painful fate, which regardless of our differences, I would not wish on anyone.

Let us be clear. If Ms. Klein was truly interested in justice, she would be alarmed by the screening of films from countries such as China and Iran , where civil liberties are in short supply. She would be marching in front of the theatre showing the film from Malaysia . But their crusade is against a tried and thoroughly tested target: Jews. Today, it is Jewish filmmakers from Tel Aviv who are in their sights, but their ultimate objective is far more ambitious and devastating.

So I repeat – enough is enough. Their brand of censorship is at odds with our society’s fundamental values: freedom of expression and freedom of individual choice. Incitement like theirs has no place at TIFF.

Donate to Elizabeth’s legal fund here…

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Still, is there something to it? Is there a common heritage that will cover El Greco and Hume and Dostoyevsky? Is there one that can include the Jacobites and the Jacobins? There is, but it is not racial, and white supremacists reject it because it rejects them. The unifying heritage of Europe is religious and philosophical. It is Jerusalem and Athens, in one famous formulation. Christian religion and Greek philosophy, filtered through Roman law and culture, are the foundation of European culture. The tensions, agreements, developments and settlements between these have shaped the Western world, and these roots of Western civilization are not congenial to white supremacy.

Christianity is universal in its message and Jewish in its origins. For centuries after its founding, Christianity’s center was the Mediterranean world, including Asia Minor and North Africa. Christianity has never been defined by race, and locally-grown racist heresies are only sustainable among those ignorant of Christianity’s teachings, origins and history.

Greek philosophy is likewise ill-suited to serve as a basis for white identity. It is either too universal (addressing the human condition in general) or too local—none of us live as citizens of an ancient Greek polis. Later philosophical developments in Europe, such as the philosophies of the Enlightenment, likewise tend to be too universal for white supremacists seeking a tribal identity. As for the scientific revolution that developed within Western culture (albeit with much borrowed from outside Europe), math doesn’t care what color someone is.

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SECULARISM AND RELIGION: THE ONSLAUGHT AGAINST THE WEST’S MORAL CODES

War is being waged against Western culture from within which is in essence a war against Christianity and its moral origins in the Hebrew Bible. By attacking these Biblical foundations in the name of reason and human rights, the culture warriors of secularism are sawing off the branch on which they sit. The only way to defend Western civilisation is to reaffirm and restore its Biblical foundations. My argument is a development of ideas I first explored in my 2012 book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power.

We are living in an era which extols reason, science and human rights. These are said to be essential for progress, a civilised society and the betterment of humanity. Religion is said to be their antithesis, the source instead of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, oppression and backward-thinking.

Some of this hostility is being driven by the perceived threat from Islamic terrorism and the Islamisation of Western culture. However, this animus against religion has far deeper roots and can be traced back to what is considered the birthplace of Western reason, the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Actually, it goes back specifically to the French Enlightenment. In England and Scotland, the Enlightenment developed reason and political liberty within the framework of Biblical belief. In France, by contrast, anti-clericalism morphed into fundamental hostility to Christianity and to religion itself.

“Ecrasez l’infame,” said Voltaire (crush infamy) — the infamy to which he referred being not just the Church but Christianity, which he wanted to replace with the religion of reason, virtue and liberty, “drawn from the bosom of nature”.

Perfecting society

But this Enlightenment did not remove religion so much as pervert it. It took millenarian fantasies, the idea that the perfection of the world was at hand, and it secularised them. Instead of God producing heaven on earth, it would be mankind which would bring that about. Reason would create the perfect society and “progress” was the process by which utopia would be attained.

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Daniel Greenfield explains Islam 101:

"Every devout Muslim is an "Islamist". Islam is not a personal religion. It is a religion of the public space. A "moderate" Muslim would have to reject Islam as a religion of the public space, as theocracy, and that secularism would be a rejection of Islam.

Nothing in Islam exists apart from anything else. While liberals view culture and religion as a buffet that they can pick and choose from, it is a single integrated system. If you accept one part, you must accept the whole. Once you accept any aspect of Islam, you must accept its legal system and once you accept that, you must accept its governance and once you accept that, you lose your rights.''

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